Stand by the Citizenry

Stand by the Citizenry Three times since 1946, holdup men have tried and failed to rob the little Bank of Middleton at Middleton (pop. 350), Tenn. Last week, when a customer slipped out to report that a fourth holdup was in progress, Middleton's citizens reached for their guns. That was just too bad for a 36-year-old Memphis desperado named Robert Henry Bondurant.

Gunman Bondurant had forced a Memphis lumberman named Thomas L. Madden to drive him to Middleton, had taken Madden into the bank as a hostage, and was doing fine. He winged a defiant cashier, then threatened to kill a customer, and in the end picked up $10,000. But when he backed out for the getaway, it seemed that half the people in town were waiting. "It was just bang, bang, bang," said an awestruck witness. "It sounded like the Battle of Shiloh. Rifles, shotguns, pistols. Everybody in town had guns."

The robber forced Captive Madden into his car. But Madden was hit by shotgun pellets, and his tires were flattened by bullets. The holdup man leaped out, dodged to a pickup truck in a hail of lead, got into it and drove it into a ditch. He fell out, bleeding from two serious wounds and peppered with innumerable shotgun pellets, ran 20 yds. and surrendered to a deputy sheriff.

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